Spectacular Prices Bid for Items in Mapplethorpe Estate : Auction: $231,000 is paid for an erotic vase. The photographer’s collections bring almost double Christie’s estimate.

Most of the art, furniture and decorative objects that the late Robert Mapplethorpe amassed over 20 years has been snapped up by collectors and dealers in a single day.

They paid a low of $55 for a turn-of-the-century drawing by Charles A. Vanderhoof and a high of $231,000 for Keith Haring’s contemporary vase decorated with erotic images. The daylong auction of Mapplethorpe’s estate was conducted Tuesday at Christie’s.

Sales of 577 lots totaled $2.27 million, well above Christie’s high estimate of $1.2 million. Proceeds will go to the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to benefit AIDS research and photography collections in major museums.

Mapplethorpe was noted for photographing the leather-bar underworld as well as high society. His collecting was equally diverse. Although the auction offered such bizarre objects as demon candlesticks and a silver skull drinking cup with hinged jawbone, more traditional art forms dominated Christie’s sale. The hottest items were contemporary artworks, photographs and art glass.

A collection of Mapplethorpe’s erotic photos are at the center of a continuing furor over federal funding of art. The National Endowment for the Arts recently sponsored a Mapplethorpe showing at a Washington museum, causing Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to lead a drive to reduce federal backing for the endowment.

At Tuesday’s auction, bids repeatedly escalated past Christie’s most optimistic estimates. The top lot, Haring’s vase, was valued at $8,000 to $10,000, but two contenders battled for it by telephone, eventually setting a record for the artist.

Andy Warhol’s “White on White Mona Lisa (Reversal Series),” valued at $30,000 to $40,000, sold for $165,000. An untitled expressionistic painting by James Brown, estimated at $15,000 to $20,000, brought $101,200.

Among photographs that brought spectacular prices, a 1908 image of Paris’ Festival of Lights by Pierre Dubreuil, valued at $7,000 to $9,000, sold for $35,200. Joel Peter Witkin’s macabre fantasy images also sold briskly, often at double their estimates.

Glass vases, bowls and bottles designed in the 1950s by Paolo Venini routinely brought several times the pre-sale estimates issued by the Park Avenue auction house.

The sale had its low points, however. Fifteen lots failed to sell, and a group of Old Master and African and Pacific works performed poorly.

Christie’s estimated all pieces in the Mapplethorpe sale at current market value, according to Andrea Krahmer, director of estate sales. “We hope and expect the celebrity factor will bring higher prices, but the question is, to what degree,” she said.

“I’m surprised and very pleased,” said attorney Michael Ward Stout, executor of the Mapplethorpe estate, as the sale total rose far above expectations.

Beneficiaries of the foundation have not yet been named, according to Stout. “We have received about 50 proposals from hospitals, museums, book publishers and educational television stations that we will be evaluating,” he said.

Stout said he had “no idea” of the foundation’s worth. The major asset--an archive of Mapplethorpe’s photographs and negatives, to be printed and marketed according to the artist’s plans--has not been fully appraised, he said.

Adding to proceeds of Tuesday’s sale are about a dozen more pieces from Mapplethorpe’s collection, valued at more than $2 million, to be offered in Christie’s upcoming auctions of contemporary, modern and Impressionist art.

The market for Mapplethorpe’s own work will receive its final public test of the week on Thursday, when Sotheby’s will put 26 of his photographs on the block.